


Train Wreck

by august_the_real



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:56:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3112079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/august_the_real/pseuds/august_the_real
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"you're like a fucking trainwreck, toby."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Train Wreck

train wreck  
august 

set at the end of the second season, and in this world bartlet is impeached

codes: cj/t  
spoilers: set at the end of the second season, and in this world bartlet is impeached.  
story notes: not in the habit of providing warnings. if there's uncertainty, best not to read.  
summary: "you're like a fucking trainwreck, toby."

for pene and sabine: the dust settles.

*

In his long, empty Washington days, he started to write their ending. With each day, he remembered less that the thing between them had always been about vague attrition, and believed more that arguments about reduced interest rates and the pronunciation of words was proof that the end was near.

"I don't know what to do now," he had said, in the first days when their apartment was cluttered with the boxes they had packed their offices into. "Write," she had replied, "it's what you've always wanted to do."

And so he sat, one morning, and started writing. Pages and pages of analysis and commentary, which spilled over into narratives and scenes set in empty apartments with women who were too much like CJ for him to have the courage to show her.

But like with all things that came too easily for him, he scratched at it until he broke. So that deadlines came and went, and he settled into the failure he told himself he was accustomed to.

He remembered very little of the man he used to be.

She tried to help him in the beginning. Even, he let himself acknowledge, in the end when he had stopped distinguishing between one failure and another. When he started finishing their arguments with, "it's not like that, Andi!"

She left him the first time, that night. And he started writing, again, pulling himself to the desk, scrawling stories about endings and walking away. There was an irrationality that he recognised, that made him feel like a crazy on a street corner, ranting about the end of the world. Except that at dinner parties he would stare at her, talking, laughing, and find himself suddenly conscious of the fragility of this thing, find himself suddenly believing in the apocalypse.

Deadlines came, and went, and they started going to bed angry, not watching Letterman introduce Schaffer. And he started lying awake, listening to the CBS mailbag, scripting the scene where she left so acutely in his mind that, when it actually came, he was caught totally unaware.

He realised, too late, that there were things he wanted to tell her. He realised, much too late, that the buzzing under his fingernails as he watched her throw random things into bags, as he said, "you really taking the phonebook, CJ?", had nothing to do with an ending and everything to do with panic.

He realised, too late, that it was too late. She stood at their door, clutching a phone book to her chest, and said, "you're like a fucking trainwreck, Toby."

Body Heat was playing on cable, and while Kathleen Turner was leaning against the beach railing, CJ was packing clothes, shoes and their phonebook into her car. "It's so hot," Kathleen Turner, in white, breathed.

"You're like a trainwreck, with a, a large vocabulary," CJ, in tears, screamed.

They had stayed in Washington, despite the fact that Bartlet's impeachment had been so thorough, so complete, that it seemed hard to imagine either of them working in politics again. CJ had been recruited back into PR almost immediately, and although he knew that she needed to be in LA, she never mentioned it and he never asked.

It made him think of Andi and the too-long staying in New York. The separate apartments.

CJ had been recruited almost immediately, and slowly their house became frequented by people who would corner him in his kitchen, opening bottles of wine and saying, "that's politics for you, huh?"

*

"Invite him," she tells her friend, "he won't come."

She is certain of this, strangely certain, and not able to fight the fact that she had never really considered celebrating her fiftieth birthday without him. She is certain of this, strangely certain, but then not so. Because she has made the mistake, the mistakes, of certainty before.

"Really?" Her friend asks.  
"No," she says, quickly, "no."

He'd written the book he was always going to write, the book he couldn't seem to write when they were living together. She had bought it, of course, and never opened it, of course. She was secretly scared that she'd see her name in the dedication, or that she wouldn't.

That she would see something of herself in the story, something of the thing that almost pulled her under.

The day after Bartlet's impeachment was announced, the networks began running dial-in phone calls. "Should President Bartlet resign?" Donna started talking about enlisted men in the war dismantling jeeps and sending them piece by piece home. Toby had Ginger and Bonnie dialing into the phone polls, and Donna was stuck in the Korean war.

She began imagining herself dismantling her desk with a nail file, shipping it piece by piece back to California.

"What the hell are you laughing at?" He leaned against her door frame.  
"I was just, Toby, god, why are you bleeding?"  
"I, uh, well, they closed the polls, and it was a ninety, seven, three spilt."  
"So you punched the television?"  
"No," he glared at her. "I threw the stapler at it, and then cut myself picking up the glass."  
"They're gonna bill you for that, you know," she said, pulling him inside the office and shutting the door.

The morning after her fiftieth birthday, the local paper runs photos under the heading, "PR's heavyweights celebrate". She still looks fantastic in red.

She loathes California, sometimes, all impunity and clean slates.

*

His nephew dies in the war. He remembers too much of sliding through jungles, can't imagine anything of clambering through mountains and caves. For the first time since he left office, he feels analysis and words collide in his mind, finds himself abandoning characters and collating words with the resolute belief that they already learnt this way forward was wrong. He watches, tears in throat, anthrax vaccination in blood, as uniformed soldiers lay flags on knees.

In his hotel room, he writes his first editorial in almost five years.

In his hotel room, he pulls up her phone number on his computer and, not for the first time, contemplates calling her.

*

There are protesters in the park she jogs in. She slows when she nears them, pushing through the crowd and smiling a little at the obvious repetitions and empty jargon of the speeches. People smelling like Jean-Paul Gaultier perfume hold up signs reading, 'War is Terror'. Before she realises, she is imagining Sam tsking and Toby, hand on left temple, extolling notions of 'real protests'.

She has what she calls 'Washington moments' where occasionally, only occasionally, she lets herself wonder how they would have done. There are rushes of memories, too quick to stop, so that sometimes she strides down corridors and still expects to find Carol on her left. She believed, mistakenly, that it would get easier over the years, to forget this thing, to forget all associated with it. It doesn't. She just forgets less of the grit, of the thirty six hour working days, and remembers more that as she leant down to pick up a can of diet Pepsi from a vending machine, Toby had said, quickly, swiftly, "I love you".

'War is Terror' the signs say.

It ended badly between the two of them so that she not only lost the man she lived with, but the person she'd call up to tell about the protesters in the park with the Gaultier perfume and the obvious jargon. It ended badly between them, and she couldn't understand why she stayed as long as she did, why she didn't stay longer.

"There's no need for that kind of language," she had replied, looking up at him, diet Pepsi can in hand. They laughed, a little, and he pressed her back into the vending machine, kissing her until she pushed him away, laughing.  
"My hand is freezing." She handed him the can.

*

The newspaper is folded and tucked half underneath his plate, obscuring the new President's head. He still thinks of him as the new President, although there have been two since they left the White House.

Someone drops a briefcase on the table; he looks up.

"You're late, Josh."  
"I can be late, what do you have to do?"

It's a long standing joke, and he almost smiles as Josh scans the room before pulling out a chair and sitting down.  
And then, like ritual:

"It was me, wasn't it?"  
"No." He flicks a finger across the white table cloth, amused.  
"C'mon Toby. It's okay, I'm an interesting person, of course you'd base a character of me."  
"Of course I would."  
"I mean, I read it. Didn't understand it, didn't like, it, but I read it."

He laughs once, and hands Josh a menu.

In a different voice, Josh says, "have you seen the latest casualty reports?"  
"Yeah."  
"It'll be six years next week, you know."  
"Yeah, Josh. It's, uh, it's a mess."  
"Dean's gonna run for the Senate. He's gonna win, too, he'll be President in ten years."  
"I don't know how many times I can have this conversation with you."  
"We could use you, is all."

He orders a club sandwich.

"Have you asked Sam?"  
Josh doesn't look at from the menu and only after a moment says, "no."  
"No," he repeats, staring at Josh, aware of the cruelty of his comparison, "we're not those people anymore, are we?"

Four years ago, CJ had dropped her briefcase and jacket on the kitchen table. "Toby, have you even been outside today?"

Her fingernails were red, some shade of red, and she rubbed lotion into her skin, over and over.

"I read about proposals for the International Criminal Court. The definition of aggression, I mean, that's what it's all about. They can't agree on how to define aggression."

Eyes he'd seen before held his. Over and over, she folded hand into hand.

She was cautious. "The International Criminal Court?"  
"We should have done something while we were there. I mean, this thing at the moment, we need an ICC. We won't have an ICC, but we need one. Because of people like us. Undefined aggression."  
Hand into hand. "I was thinking, Toby. That maybe you should, well, talk to someone. About this."  
"About this?"  
"It's been ten months. You know what I mean."  
"I know that this is the second time you're telling me I should talk to someone."

She pulled at his hand across the table. "Hey."  
"I've been reading about why they haven't put together this criminal court. Because, I don't know what I want to do now. I mean, maybe I want to do this."  
"And ten months ago, you wanted to write. And eighteen months ago, Toby, you breathed politics. I just, what's happening?"

He had no explanation for her then. He felt unhinged, suddenly unable to understand anything outside of their apartment.

"It's just not as fucking easy to get back into as PR."  
She pushed away from the table, shiny hands on wood. "I'm going to bed."  
"CJ?"  
"You know, I've been working for fourteen hours. You just insulted my job, and my intelligence. I'm going to bed." Her hands were shiny as she pushed away from the table. "I have to go to Chicago next week."

Josh, waving the menu, impatient: "Toby, the guy's waiting. Do you want a drink?"  
"Scotch and dry." The waiter leaves. "Have you spoken to her?"  
"Aw, Toby. Come on."  
"Josh, I'm not, have you spoken to her? That's all."  
"Yeah, last month. She's doing well. You know CJ, she always lands on her feet."

*

The speaker of the conference is flirting with her. She's still oddly surprised by this, still unable to imagine herself single. On the other side of the room, someone is drunkenly stumbling through a rendition of 'Danny Boy', and she finds it absurdly hysterical, head falling on arm with laughter.

The hand on her shoulder, bracing her from falling off her stool, stays there even when she's upright.

"I should tell you," she says, picking the olives out of her martini, "that I don't date men who drink."  
The speaker of the conference laughs, assuming she's flirting too, "but you're drinking."  
"Yes." She orders another drink. "Yes, I am. It's my turn."

He laughs, and she wants to tell him it wasn't a joke.

And, even though he doesn't understand, she goes home with him, fucks him on his kitchen table, all tripping over shoes and drunken bruised elbows. She remembers enough of Toby to assure herself that every word counts, that there is a difference between dating and fucking.

*

There is a story that is never far from his mind, not couched in characters or hidden phrases. CJ wakes in the morning, and turns to him. In his mind, he maps the moment with adjectives and sentence breaks. He can see it so acutely that almost everything he writes is filtered through the memory. He begins to forget whether it is a memory.

*

There are silences in her conversations, and she supposes people are waiting for explanations - for the lies, for the impeachment, for her throwing phone books and random clothes into cars and driving away.

She'll be sixty before it begins to make sense, she'll be sixty five before she understands.

"You're like a fucking train wreck," she told him. And she meant the drinking, the depression. And that, towards the end, the conversations he had with the guy selling a paper were longer than those with her.

"You're like a fucking train wreck," she said, never able to fully turn away.

*

In his long, empty Washington days, he had started to write their ending. He was younger then, believing there was a finite nature of beginnings and endings. Never expected this unending, ever unfolding thing. Never imagined himself waking at three in the morning to write stories where men apologise to tall women for being nothing that they should be.

She calls him when they are both in Seattle. There is no wonder at her being able to find him, no wonder at her strength in making the call. He rides an elevator to a fourth floor restaurant, counting off in his mind the years it has been since he's seen her. Third floor, fourth floor.

She sees him before he notices her. He feels a panic, of sorts, an impatience as she touches his wrist, as they hesitantly kiss cheeks. He thinks, briefly, amuses himself, briefly: if they had been this hesitant towards each other in those last few months, it might not have ended like it did.

Sitting at table, waving out napkins.

"What did you get Sam?" She picks up a menu.  
"A kid's desk, this wooden thing. You?"  
"One of these new 'start your children's college fund' accounts."

Dishes on table, hot to touch.

She is the first to speak. "I don't really know, I mean, how do we do this?"  
"I think I tell you that you look well."  
"I haven't read your books," she says, abruptly.  
"Uh, that's okay. Wait for the movie."

She laughs, warily, and touches the plate again, drawing hand away from heat.

There are ten kinds of apologies running through his mind, ten kinds of anger, still, at her leaving.

They talk about the war.

And, later, when she looks at her watch, saying "I should go", he feels nothing of the panic that he associates with those words. He's older now, more accustomed to the juncture between saying nothing and everything.

He says, "you should have read my books. They were all about you."


End file.
